


the truth is not kind (and neither am i)

by opensummer



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Deeply Unhealthy Relationships, Excruciatingly slow updates, F/M, POV Female Character, Post-Episode: s01e19 The Only Light in the Darkness, Pretentious Purple Prose, Raina is playing everybody, Skye does pop culture, Skye is smarter than you, Skye's Superpowers, Ward is conflicted, Women Being Awesome, heil hydra, including occasionally herself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2759780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensummer/pseuds/opensummer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye has seven minutes between the penny dropping and Ward rounding the corner. She spends the first two crying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the truth is not kind (and neither am i)

**Author's Note:**

> So I started writing this forever ago (pre1x20) when I thought the Garrett arc would take longer (I forgot it was a Whedon show) and wrote about 4k and then totally forgot about it. So I've got 3 chapters to post and a vague idea where it's going but rereading I was like hey it's not awful so why the hell not. ~~Especially after the midseason finale holy shit.~~

Skye has seven minutes between the penny dropping and Ward rounding the corner. She spends the first two crying.

Later, after they’ve rescued her, she’ll tell Coulson that and he’ll wrap her in a hug that somehow manages to avoid her cracked ribs and stitches. AC’s good people.

The team is the third good thing that ever happened to Skye. Miles was the second and the laptop she stole when she was twelve was the first. Ward was the fourth. 

+

Skye has seven minutes between the penny dropping and Ward rounding the corner. She spends the first two crying. She spends the next four hacking.

Skye pulls herself together. She had the presence of mind to replace the penny before she left the storage closet and Ward is already looking for her. He’s taking the long route she sees on the tablet and that’s good. It gives her time. 

She has a computer and that’s good too. Skye with a computer is unstoppable. She minimizes the tracker to a corner, writes the three lines of code to backdoor to her computer, opens the voice recording app and narrates what she knows as she runs through her options. Triage, prioritize what needs to be done and do it. Ward taught her that. 

(Ward is a traitor. Koenig is dead, and May probably is too. Ward is a traitor so John Garrett is still alive and Koenig was murdered to keep him from seeing the NSA’s footage. Ward is a traitor and wants her to decrypt the drive. Ward is a traitor.)

She won’t have time to find a gun since Koenig stashed theirs, but she has enough time to copy the hard drive remotely, location lock and all, and drop it into the niche of the internet that the Rising Tide occupies with orders to keep in secreted away. She’s going off grid, is in danger, and three people have her permission to access it and she comes looking for the drive without any of those three, they’re not to give it to her. 

(Ward hasn’t taught her how to hold up under torture yet. Skye wonders if that was deliberate.)

She drops questions to confirm FitzSimmons, and Coulson are who they say they are in a different post, further down. Answers to questions from private conversations at four in the morning, when hacking couldn’t settle her skin and Coulson’s insomnia was too much or FitzSimmons were tinkering on the latest. Secrets, she tells the Rising Tide because the internet loves drama, and could be dangerous for the reference. 

She sends the narration to the main computers of the base, keyed to Coulson’s lanyard. Playback will start the moment the systems pick up on the signal it broadcasts, so the team will know, even if she’s gone or- 

Ward is a traitor who needs her alive. He doesn’t know she knows, tactically she has the advantage.

She doesn’t have time to go through the base’s footage to see whether Ward managed to kill May, or if she left under her own power so she tags that fact to her narration and links the security cameras to the main screen cut to the last fifteen minutes of the computers tracking Mays badge. 

(Skye likes to think that May would win that fight. But if Ward caught her off guard, slipped a gun against her chest and pulled the trigger-)

She begins uploading the NSA’s footage of the Fridge to every intelligence agency she can think of off the top of her head, revenge for Koenig. 

+

Skye has seven minutes between the penny dropping and Ward rounding the corner. She spends the first two crying. She spends the next four hacking. The last minute she spends fixing her makeup.

Skye leaves the tablet on the floor, corrects her mascara by removing it. There’s eye drops in the cabinet and she gets rid of the red in her eyes that way. She smiles into the mirror wide and honest, the smile she used to give the people she conned, and leaves the bathroom. Ward’s already past it, checking the storage closet.

Again, the penny drops.

“The truth?” She says, and here’s some irony, Ward made her a better liar. “You scared me.” 

If you’re going to lie make it a convincing one, her SO says in her head. This is not the first time she’s kissed somebody who has betrayed her. 

Ward says “I want to stay here with you and imagine the world outside doesn’t exist.” He sounds sincere. Then he lies.

+

“Do you trust me?” Wards asks, somewhere down the road. 

And Skye says “Always.”

Is she lying?

+

On the bus he asks “So Agent Skye where to next?”

The sun is rising. She gives him coordinates to a diner in LA where she used to get free fries, back when she was starving and on the run. The real coordinates because Ward’s seen her do this twice and he’ll recognize the kill screen before she has a chance make a move. 

She has a knife in her bra, another in her boot. Ward knows that. He gave her both of them. Skye can’t take him in hand to hand even when cracked ribs and bruises are slowing him down. She thinks maybe if she can get an icer, she’ll could take him down, dump him in the cell, hack the plane to auto-pilot them back to base but that’s dependent on a dozen factors that could go wrong and is based on the premise that Ward is under orders not to kill her. She amends the thought. Ward is probably under orders not to kill her until she unlocks the drive, after that her usefulness is limited. 

There are other options but they rely on disabling Ward and escaping before they get to John Garret, to HYDRA. After they reach HYDRA the odds will not be in her favor. She doesn’t think she has the courage to kill him. Not yet. 

Her blood’s got the drug Garret is after, she’s a gifted hacker, and nobody knows that she’s an 0-8-4 besides Coulson and May. Agent Grant Ward (Traitor) hasn’t taught her how to hold up under torture yet. 

Skye likes being alive, thankyouverymuch. 

+

The sun is rising and Ward says “So Agent Skye where to next?”

She gives him the correct coordinates and he flies, she dozes beside him. When the sun is high in the sky she yawns and stretches, watches him watch her- the curve of her spine, the arch of her breasts. 

Skye counts it as a victory. 

“You mind if I go sleep?” The cockpit doesn’t have cameras, no way to watch her through the plane. She wouldn’t put past Ward to have tagged her with a tracker but a stop in the lab before she hides in the SUV is typical. She keeps her nest of blankets under the lab table to freak out Simmons, who gets bright and flustered and starts bitching about sterility and working conditions. She likes the way Fitz looks at Jemma when she gets like that. Yeah she ships it. 

“I could come with.” He says carefully neutral. 

She leans over and kisses him, careful of the stitches on his cheek, the bruises on his face. He looks at her like she is the only one in the world. This is not the first time she’s kissed somebody who has betrayed her and is in love with her. Says, “Not yet ok?” 

He kisses her, reverentially. “We’re two hours out. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

“I’ll be in the suv. Not my room.”

That makes him look again because everyone on the team knows what it means when she sleeps in the van. “Are you ok?”

“I still can’t believe May left us.” She’s not lying. Ward knows all about her abandonment issues. Deflect, deflect, deflect. 

\+ 

In the lab she digs out her blankets from under the workbench, and opens up the emergency kit she keeps below them, fake ids, money, a couple of guns- another thing she learned from Ward. There’s an icer secreted into the bottom of the compartment with three mags. Skye loads it, checks the safety, and sights. She tucks it into the blankets and carries them over to the suv, sets up her nest. When she’s safe in the enclosed space of the car, she digs out the gun and tucks it into the waistband of her jeans.

She doesn’t mean to sleep. Her best chance at this is shooting Ward when he comes to wake her.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr,](http://openemptysummer.tumblr.com/) come geek with me.


End file.
